I am on the fence about this. My first instinct is to state clearly "No" like Sooz... but when I think about it, I come up with these ideas:

So far, it seems that most people are ordering custom cut elements that they then fashion into a necklace somehow. see these examples:

www.ponoko.com/showroom/1...PYeOAi/1169
www.ponoko.com/showroom/h...ewelry/1198
www.ponoko.com/showroom/shazbot/1187

To me, this seems even more creative than someone who buys beads at a store and turns them into a necklace... these creators are designing the elements that will create the necklace, not just selecting from pre-existing inventory at the bead store... (I am not a necklace maker, so I might just be talking out of my a** here)

But for the necklace designs, I think ponoko is craft.

Or take the example of the ring, where someone has envisioned the elements that would create the ring, designed them, had them cut out and then assembled them together into a ring:

www.ponoko.com/showroom/jjohnsen/1183

She might have been able to fashion the two pieces out of balsawood or fimo or something for her prototype... but in the end, if the design really needed to be made of lucite, then at some point, a machine would have had to cut the pieces of lucite. i think she crafted that ring herself.

I'd call it design which is often part of the crafter's process, but not necessarily. As in: I can Design a tapestry pillow and then choose to Craft one myself from wool and fabric or I can Produce a kit by putting all the pieces together in a bag for you to make up yourself. You then could buy my tapestry kit and Craft your own pillow. "Crafted" implies small scale production by a single person or small group (as in a cooperative.) Once you move the production of an item into a factory model (even if your workers are doing home based piece work) it stops being craft no matter how nice it is.

This is the essence of what the founders of the Arts & Crafts movement like Wm Morris were getting at: to be crafted it must be made by the craftsman. Morris would undoubtedly have argued that Wm Stickley's furniture was not craft (no matter how aesthetically pleasing it was) because it was designed for mass production and made in a factory churning out exact copies one after the other. The point of Craft in an economic sense is the very short 'distance' between the person making the object and the person using it- generally only one or two steps removed.

But lets not be too pedantic- if you want to design a thing that can only be made in a $100K workshop and you can get someone else to do it then don't worry too much. Call it couture, designer, or art- which are all perfectly valid cousins in the craft family- and go sell it at the craft market.

it brings about the whole idea of master artist and apprentice doesnt it?

I think its very much along the lines of graphic designer vs production artist vs production designer
the graphic designer, does the concept and planning, the production artist execues it, another variation would be the production designer who takes the concept and look feel and then does the production and fills in the design if the designer has released some design hold

producer vs creator
I tend to think of the creators as the craft person
in design the production artists are the crafts person

how this would apply to ponoko
is the end result merly a component to be assembled?
is it the final product?
If i design it but dont make it how can I consider it a craft of mine, it wold be a design of mine
if I take that piece and thats it, its executed design
if i take that piece and do more with it its crafting with it

or think on it this way
its evolution/growth from crafter to master artist
(not saying any one is better than the other, they are different roles and both just as valuable)

so thought-provoking I went back to the bookshelf for my big fat red Oxford Universal Dictionary, and excerpted some of the relevant entries:
Art: I Skill
1. Skill as the result of knowledge and practice
5. The application of skill to subjects of taste, as poetry, music, etc. Perfection of workmanship or execution as an object in itself.
6. Skill applied to the arts of imitation and design, the cultivation of these in its principles, practice, and results.
II Anything wherein skill may be attained...
1. Certain branches of learning which are of the nature of instruments for more advanced studies or for the work of life. Applied in the Middle Ages to the trivium (Grammar, logic and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy); called also the free or liberal arts.
2. A body of rules for practice.
3. An occupation in which skill is employed to gratify taste or produce what is beautiful. 1597

Craft: [The transference to 'skill, art, occupation is English only.]
1. Skill, power, force
2. Intellectual power; skill, art;ability in planning or constructing, ingenuity, dexterity, occult art, magic.
3. A device, artifice, or expedient. . . .
6. A calling requiring special skill and knowledge; a manual art, a handicraft